New User Q, Any issue with nightly shutdowns of UNRAID Server?

[soundfx222]

Hi Everyone, 

I  currently use a QNAP NAS device to store music and backup files and folders so I turn my NAS on only when needed then shut it down till I need to use again.  I am just starting to learn about UNRAID and considering  migrating and wanted ask if this would still be acceptable for me to shutdown the  UNRAID server regularly/nightly or would this cause any issues?  Thank you. 

 

Vincent

[Hoopster]

7 minutes ago, soundfx222 said:

acceptable for me to shutdown the  UNRAID server regularly/nightly or would this cause any issues?

The only issue would be if you shut it down in the middle of a parity check or data transfer to Unraid array.  I used to shut my server down nightly, then I went to putting it to sleep and waking it when needed.  Now I just run it 24x7.

 

Firing up the server only when needed and shutting it down when not needed is certainly possible.

 

FYI - sleep support in Unraid is very much hardware dependent (motherboard/NICs) and it works well for many and not so well for others.

[soundfx222]

Hi, 

Thank you for sharing your experience. I have a follow up question as I am reading about The Mover service that updates the parity disks which is scheduled to run At 3:40 AM daily.   Will shutting down the server automatically trigger the mover to run before the 3:40AM scheduled task? Thank You.

 

From FAQ guide:

The Mover is a utility that runs periodically to move files off the cache disk and onto parity-protected data disk(s). If Mover logging is enabled, the mover will record all its activity to the system log.

By default the mover is scheduled to run every day at 3:40AM. This may be changed by defining your own Mover schedule string in crontab format.

[Hoopster]

44 minutes ago, soundfx222 said:

Will shutting down the server automatically trigger the mover to run before the 3:40AM scheduled task?

No, shutting down does not trigger the Mover.  Mover can be run manually before shutdown if you wish, and, of course, the schedule can be changed to any time you wish.  3:40am is just the default. 

 

How long mover takes depends on how much data needs to be moved from cache to the array.  You can control by user share if it writes data first to cache (moved to array by Mover) of if it writes directly to the array.  I don't have any shares currently writing first to cache so the Mover is not an issue in my case.

Edited January 15 by Hoopster

[itimpi]

If you want to shutdown overnight and are going to use large drives so that operations like parity checks take a long time then you might want to consider installing the Parity Check Tuning plugin.   This provides the option to restart such operations from the point previously reached when you next boot.  Without this plugin installed these operations are always restarted from the beginning if they were active when the server shutdown.

[Hoopster]

12 hours ago, itimpi said:

you might want to consider installing the Parity Check Tuning plugin

Good suggestion.  I use this plugin.  My parity drive is 8TB and it takes a little over 16 hours for a parity check.  With the tuning plugin, I split it into two overnight sessions. 

 

Most people run a monthly parity check.  I did that for years but found that quarterly if often enough on my system now.

Edited January 15 by Hoopster